To be really worried about proposed teacher strikes.

[katedan]

In England not Scotland for context. My twin daughters are year 11 and I am terrified about the impact of teacher strikes on their GCSEs. They have not yet covered the curriculum and every day counts to get them exam ready so strike days will be disastrous for year 11 and 13 pupils ( and lots of other children especially those who are vulnerable) these kids have had their education impacted by covid and now strikes. This will make the divide between state and private schools even bigger. Do you think they will go ahead or if a safety net will be put around exam years if it does.

speaking as a pastoral lead in a sixth form college please relax. A few scattered days here or there will not irrevocably alter their fate.
In my honest opinion, young people don’t get to switch off from the ‘threat of their education being doomed’. Media pumps out all sorts of nonsense that contributes to the lack of resilience that they have. We as people are not the letters and numbers we achieve so why are we encouraging our kids to feel like they are? My advice: take them out to somewhere cultural- a museum, an Art gallery or the university library in your nearest city. If you’re nowhere near any of those things then go for a walk and spend some time being daft with them. Because honestly we’ve forgotten that they’re still young and the most successful kids I have worked with (some of which have missed 50% of their schooling for various reasons) are successful regardless because of their resilience.

@Roseberry1

like who?

could you name a profession?

I agree, but when I was in minimum wage jobs I wasn’t in a union and wouldn’t have dreamt of striking as I was easily replaced.

In my opinion these strikes by all sorts of unionised workers makes a stand for all workers.

I actually worked in customer service for just as long as I have been a teacher, so I am well aware what they face. My personal experience of doing both is that I received far less violence and aggression in customer service roles than I have done in the classroom.

Also, when I worked in customer service, I had security on hand to deal with any adverse events. I don’t have that in school. The customer who threw receipts at me got escorted from the store and banned; the pupil who threw a chair at me got detention.

Other professions definitely face dangers but I’m not placed to speak about them because I have not got first hand experience. I only worked in customer service and teaching.

Oh, come on. You were deliberately winding people up last night and being completely disingenuous. If you really have had a change of heart, then do the decent thing and leave the thread. You were not debating in good faith.

You know you were trying to wind people up last night and you're happy to tear into other people but not take it in return.

I was being fairly lighthearted there. I worked directly with the public for years and experienced most of it all, unfortunately 🫤 People can be just vile!

It did get heated, but i didn't get personal with anyone in the debate.

It’s a few days of strikes not enough to impact your child’s education! I’m a teacher and as of today the strikes are going ahead. Not sure what all schools are doing but school do not need to provide work etc on these days.

Again, if all the jobs out there have so much worse pay than teaching, and are so much harder (and I'd like specific examples of POST GRAD jobs with these conditions, please...), then why are all the teachers who are leaving not coming back?

I know so many teachers who've left teaching in the last 3 years- not one of them has come back, not one of them is complaining about their current job. In a few cases, I have asked people if they would consider applying for a vacancy at a previous school (we were desperate for a physics teacher) and I was repeatedly told not a chance.

And for those complaining about the quality of teachers in your children's school- this is the problem. The really motivated and skilled teachers can easily get jobs in other industries.

I know last year some parents would have counted me among one of the crap teachers. What they didn't realise (and I wasn't allowed to tell them) was that I was planning cover for 7 lessons a week outside of my teaching periods AND marking for those classes AND regularly being pulled for cover in my PPAs. My own classes certainly weren't getting the best of me.

No, you were just tearing into a whole profession, instead.

@Roseberry1 Just stop being so disingenous, and stop trying to take the moral high ground. You are winding people up until they go off at you, and then playing the victim.

It is really poor behaviour, I'd argue trolling.

So stop trying to act like you have had a change of heart and just do the decent thing and leave the thread.

I'm not winding people up, and we've moved on from last night this evening. No, I won't leave the thread.

Oh my yes. 0 hour contracts are a farce, and care staff definitely need better pay! My mother was a care worker, and what she had to do for rubbish pay was awful, and sadly, it's not changed much.

You know you are. You know you were behaving awfully last night, and you can't just expect everyone else to move on from that.

I'm asking politely that from now on at the very least you don't interact with my posts.

The whole point of a union is, of course, that no business can afford to replace all their workers at once- and that the workers all back each other so if one person is unfairly targetted, then the workplace is impacted in return.

I really hope the strikes inspire other workers to become more unionised and fight for better pay and working conditions too.

It's low paid, insecure workers who need unions the most.

That's fine, although I must point out you keep quoting me when you could just ignore me, like I would with a poster I didn't want to engage with. Anyhow, I will not reply to any more of your posts quoting me or otherwise at your request.

When I was in a minimum wage job there is no way I could have afford to pay union fees or miss a days pay. Add to that the number of people who were just weekends/only there before going to Uni/just coming back to work/teenagers etc and you’ve got no chance of minimum wage staff joining a union.

Yes they should join a union, yes they should feel they can strike but it isn’t as simple as that.

Which sector were you in whilst on minimum wage?

Having spent today listening to my colleagues whinging about:
• why teachers can’t go on strike at a better time
• why their DC’s year group needs to be exempt
• why teachers are even allowed to strike given that it “holds the country to ransom”
• why schools can’t just provide a childcare service in lieu of the striking teachers
• why teachers can’t just accept that everyone has to work for a living
• why teachers don’t just leave if they don’t like it ‘cos “there’s plenty of people who’d take their place”…

…I have renewed sympathy for all teachers, and great solidarity with them right now.

My partners salary is approx £13k and mine £25k, and our take home pay is only £100 different.

I don’t doubt you @WineDup but how is that possible? After tax and NI there’s approximately £700 of a difference per month, is your pension and student loan taking the rest?

I think anyone on minimum wage and zero hours contracts should strike because if teachers can’t afford to live on their significantly higher pay how the hell is everyone else meant to? Be great to see shop workers , care staff , childcare workers etc take a stand and we can see how much we rely on these often undervalued and underpaid workers. Only difference is we don’t have a strong union behind us. But seriously all jobs should give you enough to live on. If your working full time and need top ups from the government to live there is something seriously wrong

For me it's not about my personal pay - remember that news and government will have you think that to turn public opinion.in fact, we are only allowed to use pay as a reason to strike.

The issue is that the last awarded pay rises were funded from school budgets, not the tax payer. These budgets are already extremely stretched to the point that as a school, we are limiting paper to one pack a month per class. Knowing we can't work on that, we buy our own.

Conditions are at their worse I have known. For years, experienced staff have been replaced with NQTs/ECTs who don't stay in the profession. Mid-year they have been replaced by supply staff as school have struggled to hire. Planning/resourcing falls to the remaining staff members.

Vulnerable children are not being supported with the right resources, the government are throwing money into schemes that have no impact and leaving school budgets dwindling.

Schools are at real risk of bankruptcy as so many are working at a deficit.

The system is broken but to the outside world, we "just want more money for part time work"

We are in Scotland so the difference in our tax is slightly larger than elsewhere in the UK - he pays none and I pay an intermediate rate of 21% which doesn’t apply elsewhere in the UK.

The rest is student loans and pension.

Id never have gone to uni if I’d known that actually, I’d not be much better off. Plus, if my salary was £12k too, we’d be eligible for a whole host of benefits which we don’t get.

And yes, obviously this is a temporary problem because right now we are both part time for childcare reasons. But we are held to ransom because even if we both worked full-time in our current jobs, we couldn’t afford childcare for our son (8am-6pm 5 days a week) and after school care for our daughter 5 days a week too. My sons nursery is £12.5k/year for full time (it’s the cheapest available) and my daughters after school is another £2.5k.

I guess it’s an example of the “squeezed middle” where we earn too much for any help, but not enough to survive comfortably. Which is a wider debate than teachers pay and conditions. When my partner had to take redundancy for health reasons, he was paid £0 in universal credit because I was expected to support him. If I dropped a day, what I lost in pay he’d get in universal credit. So in effect, I worked 1 day per week for no financial gain for a period of two years. And that was while doing supply work, before I had a permanent contract.

Its frustrating, and it’s not just a teacher problem obviously. There are a lot of other people in our situation in all sorts of employment.

The sympathy and solidarity is greatly appreciated.

The pension contribution is quite big, even as an NQT mine was well over £200 I think. I know it's worth it in the end but I have thought about opting out so many times, because the money in my pocket to eg buy a house would be a big deal.

I do know ECTs who have opted out this year, their take home is probably a bit under £1500 with the pension contribution, if they haven't had a pay rise yet. I know several ECTs who took jobs expecting the 28k salary, but their schools haven't given the pay rise (yet) and so they are on a bit less than they expected too.

I don't resent anyone getting help, of course, but if you are a family on minimum wage, there is government support available. If you're a young, single ECT with high rent, there's nothing.

It’s challenging though. I’m in Scotland and we are ahead on strike days so far. It will be 7 strike days by Easter apparently. That’s a quarter of my annual leave which I need for the holidays so am having to take unpaid parental leave.

It be is a pain and tbh if council shoved all the children in the all school hall and had back to back movies all day I would suck it up because I need to work so dc can eat/ live in a warm house etc.